Wanda is a little girl with a big beautiful head of hair. While her mother thinks her hair is ‘strong and beautiful like the clouds”, Wanda is scared the children at school will laugh at her and her teacher will say it is “a bird’s nest”. How can she learn to love herself?
Nicholas and The Wild Ones is another Niki Daly delight – this time dealing with the eternal issue of bullying. It’s Nicholas’s first day at school and already he’s noticed the ‘wild ones’ a group of wild kids who do mean things and rule the school.
The series offers a very clever way of getting children to discuss emotions and personality types and how we need all types in the world. In each story the character is given a challenge – Little Miss Sunshine comes across Miseryland – she is reprimanded for breaking all the rules and when she asks why people aren’t allowed to smile and laugh she’s told because that’s the rule!
When 12-year-old Rusty returns home to England after being evacuated to America during the Second World War, she has a dismal welcome. Five years is a long time and she no longer remembers her home country – everything really has been bigger and better in America.
Little Louie is so excited to tell his story but nothing goes as planned. From jelly to chunky peanut butter falling on his head, Louie keeps on, admirably trying to get his story across. Kids will learn that no matter what happens, persevering cheerfully is what’s important, not finishing perfectly.
A little girl grows up with huge excitement about learning to read. When she gets to grade 1 though, she is puzzled that the other children move on to bigger readers while she stays stuck on the beginning. With undiagnosed dyslexia her early school years are tough and challenging. It’s not until Grade 5 that a special teacher changes her life.
Spud 2 takes place in 1991, when Spud is attending his second year of high school at an elite boarding school in the Natal Midlands. The book juggles between Spud’s privileged boarding school and his small stuffy suburban house in Durban, where he lives with his mom and dad.
Freak. Bully. When Miriam Fisher enters Grade 7 her life becomes unbearable. Tormented by a group of popular girls, ridiculed for having a small bust and for saying what she thinks and being a little ‘weird’, Miriam finds herself pushed to breaking point.
Considering he drew the designs for some of the objects we now use most often, Leonardo da Vinci is the perfect inventor/artist to introduce to your children. This beautiful book showcases six great inventions from flying machines to architecture, hydraulic power to mechanical inventions, war machines and a mechanical man.
This delightful book was lent to us by a friend and we hardly wanted to give it back. Katie and her grandma visit the art gallery for her grandma’s birthday. Katie is gazing at a picture of The Luncheon by Claude Monet when she spies a garden in the backdrop.
It’s Junie B Jones’ first day in Grade 0 and she has to ride on a bus. She manages to get to school but when it’s home time she decides there’s no way she’s repeating that experience – so she hides in the school until everyone leaves.
Being the first non-Jewish headmaster of Kind David High School Linksfield, Johannesburg was enough of an introduction to get my interest piqued. So on a chilly Tuesday evening last week we clutched our glasses of wine at Love Books in Melville and listened to Falconer’s humble and slightly apologetic launch of his book, Notes from a Headmaster’s Desk. “
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